


A More Permanent Destination

by MangoMartini



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2013-11-07
Packaged: 2017-12-31 19:45:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MangoMartini/pseuds/MangoMartini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Falling [in love] is just like flying, except there's a more permanent destination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A More Permanent Destination

**Author's Note:**

> So after starting this for femslash February, it's finally done. There is a strong chance of a second part, because this wasn't where I originally planned to end it, but it's done for now. Ideally, this should all sync up with the timeline of seasons one and two.

_Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt._

Sebastian sat up, running her hands through her hair before groping around on the floor for her phone. 

A press of a button, and the alarm went silent. For almost a minute, all Sebastian could think about was how much she needed a haircut. 

Pushing away the cheap fleece blanket, Sebastian stood and began her morning ritual of stretching out every angle of her body. Necessary, when spending every night on a couch designed by Satan himself. Or maybe by God. It did have a certain feel like a church pew, and from what she knew that fucker could hold a grudge. 

She glanced over at the door across from the living room, completely shut. Sebastian hadn’t planned on sleeping on that couch again last night. Then again, she should have known better. Things never really went her way. Not since she met _her_. 

That day had been cold, even for January. Or maybe it wasn’t, and Sebastian had just remembered January as warmer. She wrote it off as spending so much time abroad, time written in the sun stains across her nose and the still slightly healing marks down her side. 

A a frigid breeze blew away any thoughts of the weather, and made Sebastian glad she had worn two jackets. It had just looked so grey outside. The grey building hardly stood out against the grey sky, inconspicuously tucked in with other mediocre offices. 

Stopping at the corner, Sebastian pulled out her cell phone and checked the address Stamford had texted her. Stamford was a friend of a friend of a friend from her unfortunate, nine month stint in the army, but the tip off had sounded good enough. Easy enough too, Sebastian had thought, and she needed a sort of vacation. Some work without any emotional attachment, shoot and run type of stuff, with a nice pay check. 

No one stopped her, or her scuffed boots, or her baggy trousers from entering the office building at the end of the street. Her close-cropped blonde hair got a strange look, as did the scar slicing across the bridge of her nose, but no one said anything. They looked from their paperwork to her and then back down, shaking their heads. Too British, she thought, in the way one tends to think after being abroad too long. Or too stupid. Probably both. 

She found the lift at the end of a short corridor, gleaming and free of any hand prints or smudges. Sebastian checked her phone again for the floor and pressed the corresponding button, hoping it would get there before anyone else arrived and she had to share the small space. It did. 

Out of the lift on the eleventh floor, looking down at the cookie cutter carpet, Sebastian checked her phone again, before wondering if she should knock or just go in. The elevator down the hall made menacing noises, threatening to release people who would question why she was here. It didn't feel right. This sort of thing needed to happen in an alley or pub, not in what looked to be the most boring office building ever thrown up. 

In the end, Sebastian decided to knock. 

There was no answer. 

Sebastian thought of the beating sun, the taste of sand in her mouth, and of tigers. There was no way whatever was behind that door could be any worse than all of that. So she opened it. 

"Who the hell are you?"

She stopped, halfway in the office. When she saw who was behind the desk, she had to stop herself from asking the same thing. 

Over a pint in a pub that had been too well lit for Sebastian's taste, Maggie Stamford had told her about who she was going to meet. This doctor, Moriarty, had arranged for Stamford to get out of some debt. She didn't go into detail, but Sebastian knew the kind. The kind of debt that prevents a woman from settling down and living a comfortable, high calorie life. Stamford talked about Moriarty as if he was this constant presence, black to the core, and capable of killing with a single look. That had been most of what had gotten Sebastian interested. 

Sebastian had been expecting a sort of combination of Doctor Claw and Darth Vader. Not this. 

Not this little thing, dwarfed by the high backed office chair, clad in a blindingly white shirt and skinny black tie, with dark hair nicely brushed to the side, and skin so white it looked as though it must have been dry cleaned with the shirt. 

The tits were also a surprise. 

"I think I've got the wrong room," Sebastian said finally, staying her distance from the creature glaring back at her. She knew those eyes. Those were tiger eyes. "I'm looking for a Dr. Moriarty?"

"Why?" The answer snapped back faster than Sebastian had been ready for it. The woman raised an eyebrow. Sebastian had her mouth open, to say never mind to back track her way out of there, but the woman was faster. "No. Stamford couldn't have meant you. Idiot."

Sebastian shifted her weight from her left to right foot, not sure if she or Stamford was the idiot. "I'm just going to go. Obviously this was some sort of mistake."

A tension in the room seemed to break. Not a snap, but a slow crumble, like a canyon wall falling into the river below. "Right." She drew the word out like a scalpel down skin, calm and bloody. "You are a mistake. With your poorly concealed baretta and," she paused to smile, showing teeth, "a knife in your boot? How cute."

The tension was back, but different know. Sebastian could feel Moriarty circling her, checking her out, even though she was still seated at that ridiculous desk.

"What other toys can you play with?"

Refusing to feel like cornered prey, Sebastian listed them. It was a long, barely-legal list. She saw Moriarty nod and then asked, "I thought you said I was a mistake?"

Moriarty shrugged. "Changed my mind." There was something unbelievably flippant in the sing-song tone, but it only lasted for that phrase. The next time she spoke, Moriarty was all business. "I've got something planned for tomorrow night. Someone will text you the details," she added curtly, before making a dismissive hand gesture. 

Sebastian's blue eyes followed where that hand went, the delicate and yet careless movements of it, the way the nails were all perfectly rounded at the tips, with a clear gloss that reflected some of the synthetic light of the room. They were beautiful hands, really.

At that moment, Sebastian realize she hadn't even noticed that the curtains had been drawn over the presumably large window behind the desk. Or that the walls were green, or that there was a snow globe on the desk—all she had seen was Moriarty. It was unusual. It was unprofessional. In any other circumstance, it could have gotten her killed.

Sebastian managed to stare back into the abyss that was Moriarty. Her words were slow, carefully chosen, and deliberate. "I don’t take orders from people I don't know."

The same gesture again, but less delicate, like Moriarty had just unsheathed her claws. "You will take orders from whomever I tell you to take orders from because you're never going to see me again."

It was an order, no room for negotiations.

And for the next two weeks, as January bled into February, Sebastian believed that she would never see Moriarty again. She believed it as she had believed the first text she had received from an unknown number (an address and reminder that a gun would be provided) and as she had believed the man she had shot down that night had needed to die. It had been an easy hit, some office executive with a head so large she could have shot it off blindfolded. 

The gun had been beautiful too, sleek and black and practically purring in her hands, like it was so glad to finally be touched by someone who could treat it properly. Even if she had to readjust the scopes and set up before taking the shot, the self-proclaimed clean up crew made it worth it. All Sebastian had had to do was pick up her shrugged-off leather jacket and leave the building, blood spiked with adrenaline that made the nipping London winds feel like they had the bite of the Middle East in them. In and out, adrenaline rush and no risk. It was perfect, really.

What made it all better, better than the rush of the kill, was waking up the next morning to a full bank account. She let out a low whistle when she checked it, all those numbers and zeros gleaming up at her from her phone screen. All of that for just one shot. 

_Toys_ , she thought, _for just playing with toys_. The words sounded suspiciously like what she remembered Moriarty's voice being like, and it made Sebastian shake her head, run a loving finger over the electronic numbers, and then go out to town to see how much of Moriarty she could shake from her head and her bank account. 

But that voice, unlike the money, was the sort of voice that stuck around, prickling in the back of Sebastian's mind at inopportune moments. 

"What do you know about her?" Sebastian asked, sipping the bitter beer from the dubiously-cleaned glass. This was the sort of bar she preferred, and Bill was the perfect sort of company for it. One of the unexpected perks of working for a woman who needed people murdered multiple times a month: decent coworkers to get a pint with.

His eyes narrowed under his bushy eyebrows. Bill, head of weapons acquisition and clean up, was good company. They had taken to getting a drink together after hits, or at least the ones that involved Sebastian. It started after she had asked after getting a new folding stock for a specific gun, and had ended four hours later with both of them ferociously drunk, telling tales of impossible shots. 

Bill shook his head, which moved the few hairs that were still hanging on to it. He had a few kids and wife at home, and Sebastian was still making up her mind as to if it was that or the job that had scared his hair away. "Not much. Not that you'd want to know much more anyway." He drained the rest of the contents of his glass. "Runs the entire operation from behind the scenes. Best for all of us, if you ask me."

He had only met her once, he went on to say, and after that he had gone home to hug his children and remind them that he loved them. There was something about her that did that, he said. Something about her that reminded people of death. 

Sebastian just nodded, not saying that she hadn’t felt that. She had felt something, but not that. Maybe it was because she had been interviewing for the position that caused so much of that death.

"She's like a spider," Bill said in slurred tones a few drinks later. "A black widow. With a web. You don’t want to get any closer, take it from me. Any closer and you're stuck. Stuck till you die." And from the way he said it, Sebastian knew that Bill was one of those poor flies caught in Moriarty's web.

That night, alone in her small flat, Sebastian tossed on her bed and thought of the spider with eyes like a tiger and hands that reminded her she had been alone in this bed for too long. 

February washed away to March. Work picked up, with the rumor going around that Moriarty was playing cat and mouse with some bitch detective. Whatever the case was, it kept Sebastian on her toes for nearly three days straight, setting up in sniper positions and seeing more explosives than she had since her time in China. It all culminated in a confrontation in a fucking pool of all places, and just before Sebastian had been sure she and the other hired guns would be blowing everyone to bits, they were called off with a snap. 

"With a snap," Sebastian complained, already a pint in and flagging the bartender down for another. "Like a dog! Do I look like a damned Labrador to you?"

Bill chuckled. "Do you know how many semtex vests I had to make this week? You got off easy."

They continued to drink and complain, until the incidents drowned under beer. 

The jobs came as often as she liked, with increasing responsibility. By the end of March, she even gained a voice in the set-up of the jobs, as room as there was for her and the other men to vary the plans texted to them. The other few men who were important enough to get the information had not too keen to listen to Sebastian at first. Bill had helped, but then again so had breaking one of the bastard's noses with her fist. 

Hurrying through the April rain outside a disgustingly posh flat complex at three in the morning, Sebastian cracked her knuckles and regretted that punch. It was great when it gave her a say in what building to set up on, but not so much when she was dragged out of bed at half past two to deal with a disturbance. 

Tired and still slightly drunk as she was, it had taken half the cab ride there for Sebastian to realize she was about to see Moriarty again. With that realization, Sebastian had looked down at herself, at the boxers she had been sleeping in, and the holey t shirt luckily covered by a slightly better off grey hoodie. That with the boots and even Bill had snickered, glancing back at her from the passenger's seat of the cab. 

There had been another guy in the cab as well, a wall of muscle with a surly face. He had given Sebastian a curt nod, she had returned it, and that was the end of their interaction.

He was useful, though, for breaking down the door as they rushed in, only to find, as Moriarty had put it, that they were late. 

"You're late," she said, sipping a mug of coffee as she walked towards them. Her dark hair was back in an impeccable bun at the nape of her neck, and while a robe covered most of her, her legs below the knee and her feet were exposed. 

Sebastian tried not to stare. 

There was squabbling as to what had exactly happened, and Moriarty just nodded towards the open door off the living room. Wall of Muscle had gone first, shaking his head but beckoning Bill over to look as well. Finally Sebastian was called over. A good thing, because the focus on not looking at Moriarty, who had sat down at the breakfast bar to finish her tea, was enough of an effort to make Sebastian almost fall asleep again. 

It was the excuse she used, later, when explaining what she did next. 

Because really, there was nothing inherently funny about it. There was nothing funny about the man on the floor, contorted in a pool of blood as if it had all been sucked from his body and dumped back on him. And there was nothing funny about the numerous stab wounds in his chest, or the way his throat had been slashed, or the fact that the offending dagger was currently impaled in the corpse's eye socket. 

And yet Sebastian was laughing. A quiet thing at first, nothing more than a snicker. The work was such poor quality, so messy and hap hazard. Even the slash along the throat wasn’t straight. Tired as she was, the snicker grew to a chuckle, and only then did she think to cover her mouth with a calloused hand. The thought of Moriarty doing this, with her bun and her robe, just made it worse. 

Bill shot her a look, and Sebastian went to go wait in the corridor. A nosy neighbor, probably woken by the door getting smashed in, poked his head out of a nearby door. He looked at Sebastian and Sebastian looked back. The door closed, and as she slumped against the slick painted wall, she knew she would the topic of breakfast gossip in about five hours. 

She could imagine it now, the portly man trying to explain how there had been a door kicked in down the hall, and then a dirty looking woman standing outside, nearly six feet tall with combat boots and boxers on, of all things. It made the dying down laughter come back with a vengeance. As if anyone was really going to believe him. 

"I told her she needed a body guard. A live in one."

Sebastian snorted into her beer. "Looked like she had a fine enough handle on it to me."

Bill went on to explain the gravity of the attempted assassination attempt, the details Sebastian had missed when she had been laughing, and then attempting to nap in the corridor. 

"Honestly, how old are you?"

"Thirty one," came the reply, without missing a beat. 

"My god, really?"

She shrugged it off. When she had been younger, people had thought she had been older. The scar had been part of it, back when she had first got it, and then the weapons proficiency. Now that she was older, it was reversed. Sebastian assumed it was because she lived like a university student. Or at least how she assumed she would live as a uni student, given that she never went. And if she had gone, she probably wouldn't spend three nights a week committing murder. 

The rest of her nights, when she wasn’t working of an adrenaline high in shady pubs with Bill and whoever else wanted to go, Sebastian did whatever she wanted. At first it had been getting herself reacquainted with London. Not that she had grown up anywhere near here, but she had visited. And then there was the shopping and the washing and other menial tasks that Sebastian broke up with pulling women and drinking. 

The sunburns were gone, with the brown tinge to her skin fading slightly. It was hardly the same sun here. The scars were healed too, the ones that had turned septic and necessitated her retreat back west in the first place. Now they remained dark but impotent, stretching from just under her armpit to the middle of her stomach. The claws had missed her chest but nearly spilled her guts, a fair trade, Sebastian still thought. 

It had been a comfortable three months.

Everything was usual that Sunday morning, from the tea to the feeling of the patch of kitchen linoleum under Sebastian's feet as she drank it. And then her phone buzzed. 

It was unusual, a meeting requested in the middle of the day, but Sebastian had a bank account that told her not to question anything that her phone said. 

The address was for a café in a tourist area of London, and Sebastian wrinkled her nose at the prices. She had a bank account she couldn't argue with, but she also had the same boots that she had come to London with. 

She was contemplating plain coffee or something more intricate when a voice behind her asked, "Don't you own any other clothes?"

Even hidden behind large sunglasses and rouge red lips, Sebastian knew who that was. She knew that voice. She knew every syllable that voice had ever uttered to her. And know she knew the smell, the expensive musky perfume that cut through the tang of burned coffee like lightening in a storm. 

Sebastian looked down at herself. She was, oddly enough, wearing what she had been wearing when she first met Moriarty, down to the jacket. It had been chilly that morning. 

"Not really."

They ordered coffee. A medium coffee for Sebastian, who tried not to look too condescending when Moriarty's ordered sounded more like gibberish than a drink. Really she tried not to do too much of anything, to stand to close or look to much at the woman she had been informed quite frankly that she would never see again. 

Looking at her across a café table while waiting for coffee to cool was surreal.

It didn’t help that neither of them were talking, and in the open air café Moriarty still hadn’t taken off her glasses. Her hair was down, though, falling past her shoulders and on to the front of her tailored jacket in a way that made Sebastian's eyes go back to her coffee before she reached the end of it. 

"You're going to move in with me." 

Sebastian's mouth dropped open. Her mind felt as though a grenade had been tossed into it, exploding and distorting thoughts across all hemispheres and clouding everything in smoke. It even had the same feeling of bad, of wrong, of a complete reversal of all the laws of nature and even a few of magic as well. In her mouth she could have sworn she tasted sand. 

From all this came the eloquent reply of, "No."

That had Moriarty taking her glasses off, setting them down on the shiny tabletop next to her untouched coffee. And there were those tiger eyes, dangerous like diamond cyanide. Sebastian made the mistake of looking into them and hooked a foot around the leg of the metal café chair to ground herself. 

"Excuse me?"

She knew those words. They meant no. They meant she didn't have a choice. They, like so many words of any language, meant anything but what it actually they actually meant. They tasted like blood in her mouth and she wasn’t even the one who said them. 

A sip of the bitter coffee got the imagined taste out of her mouth. Sebastian nudged the top of her boot of the foot hooked on the chair leg closer to the leg, to feel the blade she had hidden there. She repeated what she had said slowly, had more coffee, and waited, using the challenge of looking back into Moriarty's eyes as a chance to pick out exactly where the gold flecks in the brown were. 

A look passed over Moriarty. A look of numbers and thoughts and finally, "Fine. Don't agree." The words had an easiness and a lightness to them that made Sebastian's stomach clench. Moriarty put her glasses back on and adjusted the small purse on her arm, not that she had ever taken it off. "I didn't think you would anyway."

The yellow that tinged the flames of the fire had the same hue as the cab Sebastian had watched Moriarty ride away in forty minutes before. 

"Bloody fuck." It was all she could say, standing across the street from her flat complex as she watched the fire rage on, devouring it. When she overheard from a firefighter that it started in the east of the building, second floor, from candles, Sebastian had stuck her hands in her pockets and sulked away upon hearing that. She didn’t own any candles. 

Her phone buzzed. 

You're going to move in with me. JM

An address followed it. 

Eight hours later, after doing everything she could possibly think of to kill time, Sebastian begrudgingly caught a cab to the address. It didn't surprise Sebastian that, even though this place was just as nice as the other, it wasn’t the one she had visited before. One can't exactly murder an assassin in the bedroom and then not be expected to move. Not with the amount of bitching Sebastian had heard from the clean up crew. 

"You're late, Moran," Moriarty had announced, turning back around to go back into the flat. Sebastian followed as soon as she was sure the front door was locked. She then realized that Moriarty had called her, thought of the flames licking away at where she used to live, and did not correct her. 

The setup of the flat was usual, a corridor leading into a living room, attached kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom accessible from one room and the living room. It was small, but the details spoke the price. Marble, hard woods, lush curtains, stainless steel, and things like a flat screen television. It felt nothing like a home.

"Which room is mine?"

Moriarty nodded towards the couch, a white, angular monstrosity, covered with a pillow, blanket, and two paper sacks that upon inspection contained all of Sebastian's possessions Moriarty deemed worthy of being saved. It wasn’t much. 

"That room is mine, and the other is my office."

"You burned down my place and now you expect me to sleep on the couch?"

"If you'd prefer to sleep on the floor, I'm not going to stop you."

After a week of sleeping on the couch, Sebastian tried turning the cushions over. It didn't help. But it didn't stop her from coming back after each night, coming back to the stiff couch, the sterile walls, and the laundry list of menial tasks to do texted to her mobile each morning. 

"What would happen if I wanted to leave?" she asked on a Wednesday night, picking the broccoli out of her Chinese takeaway with chopsticks and dropping the vile vegetable into an empty container. Moriarty was typing. Sebastian never saw her eating, but knew Moriarty must. She looked like she ate. 

Moriarty stopped typing. She reached down into the handbag by her feet and pulled out a pistol. She pointed it at Sebastian without so much as blinking. "Do you want to leave?"

Sebastian knew after that. If she wanted to leave, it would be like that. "I'm good," she replied, spearing a piece of chicken and popping it into her mouth. 

And for the most part she was. Apart from the Sunday she had been woken up by Moriarty tossing a stiletto at her head, or the Thursday when Moriarty making coffee had set the smoke alarm off, or the Monday where all Moriarty did was break three wine glasses and lock herself in the other room. 

The flat had two bedrooms: Moriarty's and another one Sebastian assumed she used as a study. Weeks after living there and Sebastian still had never seen the inside of either. 

Not that it stopped her from doing the shopping, carting around the dry cleaning, and picking up food for takeaway as Sebastian didn't cook and Moriarty received dirty looks if she even looked at the kitchen now. The lists of daily tasks, murders included, were generally texted to her. 

Those were the good days. 

The days where, over Indian food, Sebastian could ask, "So what is it exactly that you do?" 

Because she had heard rumors, and knew about the doctorate degree. Andrew, the shaky ginger in charge of arson, claimed it had to do with aliens. Sebastian was on good terms with Andrew, aliens or not, and he bought her a pint every now and again. It helped that she had beaten the crap out of him for burning her place down. 

"Consulting." In between tapping at her Blackberry, Moriarty nibbled a piece of naan. 

In between being very interested in her curry, Sebastian watched. 

Moriarty became bored of the bread and put it down. "People are idiots. Controlling them," she paused to crumble some bread between her sharp fingers, "Passes the time."

"Right, boss."

Eight words, Sebastian noted, taking the remains of her curry in the take out container to the bin, a new record. It filled in the gaps too, of what Bill had told her and Andrew had rambled on about. Hardly any of it was legal, Sebastian knew all too well. Legal consulting didn't require a professional sniper assassin. Or any of the other people Moriarty hired. 

"I thought they didn't let women train as snipers," Bill had commented after a particularly impressive shot and a story about how Sebastian had pulled off a better one in Korea. 

Sebastian smirked. "They don't. But there's always someone who wants someone dead, and doesn't care who's behind the trigger as long as it gets done." She told them the short version, of leaving the military to travel the east, learning skills as she went and becoming one of the best at what the army would have never let her do. "The short hair helps."

A younger guy, one Bill seemed to be training up, with too many tattoos and a penchant for smoking the foulest smelling cigarettes ever invented, snickered. "And the name?"

The smirk went away. "Da always wanted a boy. He used to tell me he would make do with what he got."

Then there was the tenth of May. 

Sebastian had gone out early to get more tea, coffee, and the too-sugary biscuits she never saw Moriarty eat but nevertheless steadily disappeared from the cupboard. She hadn’t seen Moriarty up that morning, but it wasn’t surprising. Light was still coming out from under the door of the other room. Sebastian had turned the living room light off before she left, but this wasn’t unusual. 

What was unusual was Moriarty sprawled out on the couch on the living room couch, on Sebastian's couch, in a robe similar to the one Sebastian had seen her in the night she had murdered the would-be assassin. Sebastian dropped the groceries, tugging off her winter coat and leaving it near the door as well. 

"Boss?"

Moriarty moved. Sebastian felt her shoulders relax. She was alive, at least. No need to check her pulse. 

"You alright then?"

There was a response, and while Sebastian had a feeling it would have beaten the eight word record, it was spoken into Sebastian's pillow and so Sebastain couldn't hear any of it. A quick and completely clinical look over Moriarty made Sebastian confident that she was unharmed. Underdressed. Unharmed. 

"Right then. You can sulk all you like, but you're not doing it there." Moriarty didn't move, and Sebastian didn't care. She scooped up the sulking consultant, surprised at how solid she felt despite the silk robe. 

"Put me down, Moran!" She struggled and Sebastian held her tighter. 

There was a moment when she almost dropped Moriarty onto the coffee table, and was almost too proud of maneuvering the squirming body out of the living room and in to her bedroom to notice the way Moriarty clung to her, if only for a moment. 

There was a bed, black and red blankets in a unmade mess, with pillows on the floor among shoes and clothes and books. Sebastian tried not to step on anything too important as she walked the short distance to Moriarty's bed and dropped her. She landed face down and didn’t move. Sebastian avoided looking at her legs after she realized she was doing it at all. Instead she looked at the back of Moriarty's head. 

"There. You're down."

Sundry grumbling, nothing coherent. 

Sebastian picked a pillow up from the floor and set it next to Moriarty's head. She had half a mind to smack her with it, before remembering Moriarty could possibly have weapons anywhere, and Sebastian was always painfully weapons-free. 

A few hours later, when pouring the boiling water into the mug for tea, Sebastian realized she had wasted what could logically be assumed as a day off by reading the paper and then making tea for mentally unstable and armed woman who had been making her sleep on a couch for the past four months. 

Moriarty was, or at least looked, asleep when Sebastian brought in the tea and a plate of those sickening biscuits. She shut the door quietly behind herself. 

It took another hour of silence to convince Sebastian to get dressed, go out to see a film. She made it through half of the action film before hurrying back to the flat, only to find that nothing had changed at all. Sighing, Sebastian spent the rest of the day reading one of the paper back novels she thought she'd never have time for. 

"You're her bitch," Bill's trainee informed Sebastian the next night. 

"Bodyguard," Sebastian corrected, feeling her stomach twist. 

She had always attracted the crazies. It started with the girl in school who had fascination with mass murderers, and culminated in eastern Europe with the double agent arms dealer who had a fondness for cocaine and nitroglycerin. They hadn’t broke up exactly, but it had generally been accepted by her cohorts on the continent that when one member of the relationship was arrested by Interpol, it was a breakup. 

Sebastian had avoided relationships after that, clean for three years before the wounds from illegal tiger fights had sent her first to a sick bed in Thailand and then Germany, before winding up in London and on a couch of another madwoman. 

A madwoman whose first name, Sebastian had realized after pulling the trigger one night, she didn't even know. 

It took three days for Moriarty to come out of whatever mood she had been in. On Friday morning, dressed and dangerous, it was nearly impossible to reconcile her with the sulking mess that had left her pillow smelling mildly of jasmine for a day after. Spiders, webs, tigers, whatever it was it was back. 

What wasn’t back was Moriarty's suit jacket. She left her bedroom dressed as usual, with the exception of the suit jacket. Same heels, same skirt, same blouse—this one was a deep scarlet fabric that swished when she walked. 

Sebastian took a drink of her coffee and nearly choked. Moriarty looked at her, just for a second, with that numbers look, and then entered the other room. 

It was only when she turned her back that Sebastian noticed the cut out in the back of the blouse, showing a circular expanse of milky white skin perfection. She stared, unrepentantly, until Moriarty entered the other room. 

Four days later, after coming back from braving heat and crowds of tourists in order to run some errands, Sebastian found Moriarty wearing no jacket, with a blue button up blouse. The top button of Moriarty's blouse was undone. Sebastian's eyes zeroed in on the spot where Moriarty's neck met her chest. 

"Where the hell were you?" Sitting on the angular chair in the living room, the only other thing to sit on other than Sebastian's couch, Moriarty did not even look up from whatever she was going on her phone. 

"Buying new boots."

Those eyes swept up and down Sebastian like fire over cheap flats. "Good. Your last ones were hideous."

She rolled her eyes and hung her coat up. "They had holes. These are the new ones."

"They're hideous too."

The top button problem persisted into June, matching the rapidly rising temperature when it turned into a two button problem. Sebastian eventually steeled herself to it. Or she had, until Moriarty began wearing that same tie she had been wearing when Sebastian had first met her, undone slightly to accommodate the undone buttons. 

Sebastian went out the night after the first tie day, making her way back to the couch only after a full night of debauchery, smelling like wine with cheap lipstick on her neck. She spent most of the day in bed, nursing a hangover but feeling better overall, like she had found a solution to the two button problem. 

That night, while the news talked of the hottest recorded temperature on that specific date, Moriarty had her on a rooftop waiting to pull off a hit, only to make her wait in position for nearly three hours before calling it off. After that, Sebastian didn't go out again, and wasn’t pointlessly put on a rooftop again, trading one frustration for another.

"Does she date?"

Andrew laughed. 

"And I swear to god if you mention aliens I'm grabbing that bottle and smashing it over your bloody head."

That sobered him. "You'd know, wouldn’t you? Living there. I have no idea how you do it."

"You interested?" Bill's trainee asked, in a voice that made Sebastian's hand tense around her glass. 

She shook her head, feeling her hair move. She needed a haircut. "Not my type."

Andrew leaned in a little. "What is your type, then?"

"Aliens." 

Summer, it turned out, was not the time of the year for assassinations. 

Moriarty would wake up, often to the sounds of Sebastian making coffee, bark orders, and then retreat to the other room for hours on end. From her place on the couch, Sebastian could often make out curses and grunts, or streams of obscenities directed at no one in particular. Between bites of toast and the daily paper, she catalogued the screams and noises Moriarty made behind the wall. 

"Money, money, that's all they ever want. Boring. It’s all boring."

Sebastian had given up counting words about a month ago, thanks to the screams. She wasn’t ever sure if they should count or not, and the game was no fun without concrete rules. 

"Anyone you want me to kill, boss?"

Her hands were itching to get back on a trigger. It was the only time she was ever allowed to handle a gun, or anything larger than a kitchen knife, and it grated against every nerve in her body. She knew she could take whoever tried to break into Moriarty's flat with whatever sundry item was lying nearby, so she never brought up the possibility of her own weapons in the flat. But there was just something about a well-placed bullet through someone's skull that blunt force trauma didn’t have. 

There was that look again. That look, with the stress-pulled hair and the buttons undone. Sebastian's back stiffened and she waited on the next word, prepared to obey it without a second thought. The power was palpable. 

Moriarty just looked at her. An owl to a mouse. A spider to a fly. 

"No."

Sebastian sighed but let it go, paying more attention to her dinner and not even attempting small talk. The last time she had done that, Moriarty had thrown a knife at her. She'd needed three stitches. 

When Moriarty left the other room for the evening the next night, she wasn’t wearing shoes. That one did not bother Sebastian much, except to remind her of their difference in height. Moriarty was that much shorter outside of her heels. 

The next day it was the lack of stockings as well, and Sebastian remembered the last time she had seen those legs, long and exposed on the sheets of Moriarty's bed. Moriarty was not very tall, nor were her legs very long, but they were pearly white. Pale, perfect, in a way that made Sebastian chew on her tongue and look at any other part of the room that was not begging for her to bite it. 

Two days later though, when another button was undone and the tie further down, Sebastian left to see a film and stayed through its entirety. Only death threats texted to her mobile stopped her getting dinner out as well. 

It was a nightmare. Moriarty would growl at the computer in the other room, then go out to the kitchen and work in plain sight of Sebastian's couch. Each loose stand of hair and flash of white tooth over red lip held Sebastian's attention better than any mark, her body as still as waiting water. 

It didn't help that the blouses were now un-tucked, and occasionally Moriarty would put up her hair so that the entire expanse of her neck was visible. Sebastian wanted to bite it.

But even when Moriarty leaned a little closer, looking up through impossibly long lashes, Sebastian only stood her ground, determined not to flirt with danger. Even if danger was nearly a foot shorter than her without heels on. 

It went on much the same, summer reruns and sparse clouds punctuated with restless nights and tirelessly averted eyes. Sebastian endured it all as well as she could, trying not to look and then stealing glances that she went over and over again in her mind, until she was sure she had every visible curve and line of that body memorized. 

"Fucking people," she grumbled, slamming the door. On the evening trip to the store she had been annoyed by two sets of group tours, a mother with a screaming brat in the shop, and a couple trying to ask for directions in broken English. All she had wanted was more milk, and it sent her back to the flat with a hope that Moriarty finally had someone she wanted dead. 

What she hadn't been hoping for was Moriarty sitting on Sebastian's couch, in relative darkness, with glass of red wine in hand, watching television. Only a far off kitchen light was on, and with the glow of the television, it made the flat feel alien. 

"You're in my bed," Sebastian stated, toeing off her boots. 

"My couch," Moriarty shot back, without turning around. 

Sebastian didn't argue. She could sleep sitting up if she needed to, as long as she could get the blanket out from under Moriarty. 

Given her short stature and the set up of the flat, all Sebastian could see when she entered was the back of her head, and her arm on the arm rest holding the wine glass. The back of the head with straight, silky hair that was begging a hand to grab it. The hand around the stem of the wine glass, small and delicate with red nails that would look so good tied up. Sebastian shook her head. 

"Out."

It was easy enough to say as she approached, but after Sebastian wasn’t sure she had any idea what the word meant anymore. Her mouth went dry and her stomach felt like it had curled up and died. There was Moriarty, sitting on the couch like it was a throne. She had no crown, though, and no tie. No shirt or skirt or stockings or shoes. Just that silk robe, open to reveal nightclothes of a similar make underneath. 

"No."

Sebastian winced. 

"I'm tired. Can't you finish watching this later?" 

Moriarty raised an eyebrow and looked at Sebastian. 

"Sit."

Every cell in her body seemed to be shaking, but she obeyed. She did not even attempt to watch the movie, or sleep, even though five minutes ago her body had been aching for it. Now it was too busy cataloging every breath Moriarty took, how close she was sitting, the way her robe fell on her legs, and having the smallest spasms each time Moriarty took a sip from the wineglass in her goddamn hand. 

She needed to do something. To be so close to something so dangerous and lacking the ability to do anything about it was worse torture than anything Moriarty had inflicted during the unintentional, extended strip tease. Sebastian felt too scared to shift slightly in her seat, or even breath, until she couldn't stand it any longer and had to do something and ended up moving the smallest inch and breathing the most miniscule breath possible. 

Moriarty took the final sip from her glass and leaned forward to set it on the coffee table. Her hair fell over her shoulder. She looked over at Sebastian, her face washed out in the flickering light of the television, wearing too much makeup for someone in their pajamas. 

Sebastian swallowed and the sound was deafening. Moriarty was so close now, each eyelash perfectly clear and countable. If Sebastian looked at just the right way, she could see herself reflected in Moriarty's eyes, amongst the gold and browns and greens that were always there. 

"Boss?"

"Moran."

Flickering in between the colors, Sebastian thought she saw it. Dancing between danger and gold and death was a spark, a faint flicker, a vague hope and a potential that maybe everything she had thought was wrong. Only realizing what she was doing once she was doing it, Sebastian licked her lips. Moriarty kept looking at her, expectantly, like waiting for her to rattle off the optimum firing distance for the latest riffle or the exact time she had pulled the trigger. 

She leaned in. 

Moriarty didn't move. 

She put one hand on the couch by Moriarty's leg. 

Moriarty didn't move. 

The kiss was quick, deadly accurate but tentative, lasting only a second before Sebastian felt the sting of the slap across her left cheek. 

Sebastian pulled back instantly, on high alert but moving no more than that, not even to touch her face. 

"If you ever touch me again, I will rip you apart with my bare hands." Her eyes were black. 

Moriarty slammed her bedroom door so hard that, had there been any pictures on the walls, they would have fallen off. 

The next morning Sebastian awoke to the sounds of her phone, the need for a haircut, and a list of instructions on top of a plane ticket to Berlin. While she stretched out her body, she tried to get rid of the sinking feeling. Losing always hurt like this. 

That train of thought lasted through packing some clothes and toiletries into a threadbare duffle bag, and then onto the airplane. It took a slight detour as Sebastian found she had a seat between a large and sweaty man and a woman with a small child. She had no idea how Moriarty could have possibly planned that, but would not put it past her. 

Nothing stung as much, though, as the fact that the ticket to Berlin was one way. 

She spent most of July and August in Berlin, loaned out as it were to a crime syndicate indirectly under Moriarty's control. Or so Sebastian had pieced together. It could be that they simply required quite a lot of consulting over the years. It didn't stop her from twitching each time they mentioned 'Doktor Moriarty.'

And it was lonely. Lonely and brutal, mostly close range kills, and a shit flat to herself. Company was hard to come by, though whether or not it was because picking up women with an English to German phrasebook was embarrassing or because none of them had the tiger eyes and deadly claws she craved, Sebastian had no idea. It was all the same in the end, when a return ticket to London showed up in her mail. 

Sebastian spent a good two hours deciding whether or not she wanted to burn it. Burn it, stay in Berlin, where the feeling of blood on her hands was common and she at least had a bed. But the next day she was on the plane, flying a blissfully empty flight back. 

The two hour flight felt like an eternity, and the cab ride back to the flat even longer. Yes, Moriarty hadn’t texted, or called, or contacted her at all in the weeks that she had been away. But she had sent the ticket, so something must have changed. It was a dull hope, throbbing under the surface like a lingering infection, and Sebastian didn’t have the will to fight it. There was a reason she was supposed to be coming back, and she clung to it. 

The front door of the flat looked so foreign. Somehow Sebastian had remembered the blue color a shade darker. She looked at it, the paint and gold numbers, breathing in before opening the door. 

Of all the things she had expected to greet her, from insults to death threats to flying shoes, she had not been expecting the sound of laughter. At first she had no idea what it even was, or when Moriarty learned how to do that. Sebastian shut the door slowly behind herself, dropping her bag to the floor near the door as if it would help her get a handle on what exactly she was seeing. 

And there was Moriarty. All done up with each button and both shoes, tie straight, drinking tea in the kitchen table and smiling. Next to her was a man, broad shoulders and dark hair, smiling as well, drinking out of the cup Sebastian used. She had almost believed it was her cup. 

She stood there, unsure of what to do. Waiting for orders. 

It was the man that spoke, though. "You must be Sebastian Moran." The effortlessly seductive tone of his voice made Sebastian want to stab him with the switchblade still in her boot. He waved for her to come closer. "Jane was just telling me about you."

The fact that this man knew Moriarty's name hit harder than the fact that he was using her mug. She kept her face blank, but saw Moriarty smile. 

"Couldn't lend her to Klaus for too long," Moriarty replied, speaking more to the man than Sebastian, who was still standing in the doorway. "He couldn't afford it."

The man made a nod like he knew what she was even talking about, which infuriated Sebastian even more. He wasn’t a replacement, Sebastian knew that just from looking at his hands. He looked as though he had never even held a kitchen knife, much less a rifle. 

"She doesn’t talk much, does she?" the man asked, and Moriarty shook her head. 

"I didn't hire her for her brains."

Dismissed after that remark, Sebastian left and tried to read in the living room as Moriarty and this man, this Adrian Adler, talked. He was in the business of misbehaving, Sebastian learned from eavesdropping, knuckles turning white as Adrian did not even try to lower his voice as he went into the finer details of his line of work. 

By the end of the meeting, Sebastian had imagined stabbing this man in every vital artery, hacking him to pieces, and where exactly she'd drop the body in the Thames. The page of the paperback she had been staring at had tear marks all over it, small but there, and she had worked the back cover into two pieces. 

Still, as he came out of the kitchen to leave, Sebastian stood, just in time to see him give Moriarty a kiss on each cheek. Sebastian ground her teeth together as he and Moriarty made plans for another meeting. 

"What do you think of my new friend, Moran?" Moriarty asked, looking up and calculating. 

Sebastian made a noncommittal noise and sat back on the couch, grabbing the paperback. 

"Don't worry," she said, with a grin that reminded Sebastian of a clown in a sewer handing out balloons. "Next time Adrian and I go out, you'll be invited to."

She had brushed the remark off as she went to clean the kitchen that day, because there was no way Moriarty would do it. But a few days later, decked out in black and with a rifle set up on a nearby rooftop, Sebastian wondered for the hundredth time that night how she had just ignored the comment. 

In a sense she was out with them. Moriarty had ordered Sebastian to get ready for a hit, and she had done so. What Moriarty hadn’t mentioned was that, instead of her usual collared shirts and pencil skirts, she was going to be wearing a dress. 

And not just any dress. It was black and floor length, with a slit up her thigh Sebastian looked away from only to see exactly how low cut the dress was, with straps pushed so far over on her pale shoulders that it was almost like not having any at all. The shoes brought Moriarty up another four inches, black, with blood red bottoms. 

Out of everything Sebastian was thinking and wanting to say, standing there in black boots and a black turtleneck with her gloves in her pocket, what had come out of her mouth was, "Where are you going?"

And Moriarty had just smiled. 

Checking the time, Sebastian cursed Adrian Adler, the flowers he had brought Moriarty, and the way she had made Sebastian cut the bottoms off the stems and put them in a vase before they left. The red of the roses had been the same shade as the bottom of Moriarty's high heels. 

Sebastian had watched those shoes as Moriarty and Adrian left, arm in arm, to hail a cab. In the sky, dark clouds gathered in the darkening sky. Sebastian had caught one to follow them, meeting with the usual crew to set up what she only then learned was a precautionary position. 

"It's just in case something happens and someone needs to be taken out. Since, as you know, she doesn’t go out much."

Up this high, the wind howled, cutting through Sebastian's worn trousers like flaming blades of ice despite the August temperatures. Cold as it was, the air came tinged with the smell of masala, and it did nothing to help the situation. 

"So I have to watch her all night."

Bill had put a hand on Sebastian's shoulder, gave it a squeeze, and sighed. She had sighed as well. 

"If I need cleanup, I'll call you."

Bill had left, cuffing his trainee over the head when he had started to snicker. 

That had been three hours ago, three agonizing hours of watching Moriarty dancing, talking, drinking punch with Adrian, holding his hand. Outside the smell of masala dwindled. 

It was a charity ball, she had learned, through the sniper scope. Which meant it must be something Adrian gave money too. Moriarty didn't do charities. If anything it made it worse, almost as bad as the string ensemble insisting on apparently playing so many slow songs. 

The slow songs were the worst. Watching Adrian pulling Moriarty closer, the back of her neck curved and exposed with her hair pinned up like that. It was hardly dancing, more like swaying on each other, and only years of training kept Sebastian from looking away. 

Especially when Moriarty would look up, through the mostly-glass ceiling of the venue, to the building where she knew Sebastian was. That look was the worst, as if she was making sure Sebastian was looking, even though she knew there was no way Sebastian wouldn’t look. 

In the small hours of the morning, the ball was wrapping up, and Sebastian saw Moriarty get her wrap, ready to leave. A few texts later and a cleanup crew came to take away the rifle and make it look as though Sebastian had never even been there.

She followed them home, hands balled into fists in her pockets. Nothing happened, of course, but still Sebastian hung near the entrance to the corridor where the flat was, giving Moriarty and Adrian space and looking out for any last threats. 

She looked over just in time to see Adrian kiss Moriarty. 

On the lips. 

And Moriarty let it happen, hands by her sides. She said something quietly to him as his lips left hers that Sebastian couldn’t hear. Then he just walked away. If he said a goodbye to Sebastian, she wasn’t paying attention enough to care. 

Sebastian followed Moriarty inside, locking the door behind her. She unlaced her boots and watched as Moriarty went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Her dress pooled on swished around her feet when she walked. With only the kitchen light on, the flat had an eerie feel, almost like that last fateful night. 

That thought stung more than Sebastian thought it should, through the chill of the night that hadn’t managed to freeze her heart. This was how it was, how it was going to be. 

"I quit," was all she said, looking at the kitchen table and not at Moriarty. 

The response was instantaneous. "What," Moriarty demanded, spinning around. She placed the cup on the counter, empty. 

Sebastian shook her head. "I said I quit. I'm done. You can't do this to me and expect me to stay."

Moriarty's face darkened. "I can. I own you." She took a step closer to Sebastian. 

"No, you don't."

Another step closer. "You'll be nothing without me. You are nothing without me! You're mine."

Moriarty was so close now. Sebastian turned to leave and there was a sound of feet on the tile floor. Moriarty's hand grabbed her upper arm, and Sebastian grabbed Moriarty's wrist, twisting it around from muscle memory alone. It felt so small in her hand. She contemplated snapping it. 

"Stop." The command came out at an even tone that sounded so incongruous to the look in Moriarty's eyes. 

"No!"

Moriarty struggled, snarling like a cat, and in two fluid movements Sebastian had Moriarty slammed up against the wall, glaring down at her. Moriarty had that look, that look from the pool and so many other times before, that look of danger and bad ideas. That look like she was about to pounce. 

It was a look that made Sebastian want to kill. 

"I don't belong to you."

"Yes, you do." 

The answer was instantaneous and Sebastian hated it. This close she could see the tendrils of hair that had fallen out of her up do, and the flecks of gold in Moriarty's dark eyes. It snared her, trapped her, and she couldn't look away. The pocket of air between them crackled with energy. 

Sebastian knew she was the only one that felt it. 

"You're mine," Moriarty repeated. 

This close, Sebastian could smell Adrian's cologne on Moriarty. She let go of her wrist. 

"Let's see you do it, then. Let's see you just walk away like you want to. Like you wouldn’t come crawling back at the first text message I sent you. I dare you to."

The kiss came growling and biting, calloused hands on Moriarty's bare shoulders pushing her harder against the wall as Sebastian ravaged her mouth. There was the taste of lipstick and a sagging feeling, like air being let out of a balloon. Only when manicured nails tugged at the sides of Sebastian's shirt did she realize that it wasn’t from her. 

The nails were under the shirt in a second, clawing at Sebastian's back and making her gasp. She didn’t say anything. Instead she clawed back, hands on the bare shoulders she had been forced to watch all evening dancing with him. 

Breathing hard, she pulled her mouth away from Moriarty's only to dive back down and bite her neck hard enough to make Moriarty hiss. Hiss but not move away, moving closer even as the bites turned to kisses. The kitchen felt darker, hotter. 

Sebastian's hands traveled down, determined, from her shoulders to her sides, and Moriarty arched her back. 

They kissed again, all tongue and teeth, and hands appeared in Sebastian's hair. They held it for a moment, then another, and then grabbed, pulling her head back by the thing strands. 

"Fucking hell," Sebastian cursed in between loud breaths. She looked down at Moriarty, lips and neck red and bruised. Her bottom lip looked as though it was bleeding, though Sebastian didn’t remember tasting blood. She licked her own at the thought. 

"We can't do this here."

Sebastian's' brows furrowed, but she did nothing to move her hands away. "Actually I'm pretty sure we can. There's a table and—"

Moriarty wrinkled her nose. "We eat there!"

"Since when?"

But Sebastian knew that look, and she knew when she had lost an argument. 

One of those hands snaked down from her hair to grab the front of her shirt, and Moriarty growled, "Bedroom. Now."

"Yes, boss."

They only made it to the living room before Moriarty shoved Sebastian against the white wall. The back of her head hit with a sickening smack and stars filled her eyes. Sebastian tried to blink them out as fast as they could. 

She felt more than saw Moriarty’s hand at her throat, squeezing tight. 

“Hnng,” Moran choked out, tilting her head up and licking her lips. 

“Silence.”

Moriarty let up for a moment, only to shove Sebastian back against the wall, harder this time. The hand at her throat moved, though, and Sebastian gasped for air. One of Moriarty’s legs was pushing between hers, pinning her against the wall. Sebastian canted her hips forward, the angle all wrong, wishing Moriarty was taller. 

Those sharp fingers tore Sebastian's shirt from over her head, tossing it on the floor. Sebastian looked down, first feeling self conscious about the worn, black bra, her smallish breasts, and the three jagged scars running darkly down her abdomen. But then she saw Moriarty. 

She looked feral. Her eyes were dark as a knife, hair starting to cover her face. Her cheeks were flushed red and her nails, the same red, dug into Sebastian's shoulder, stretching, breaking the skin—claw marks. A hiss escaped her lips, pain spreading, followed by a gasping moan. 

“Painful, Moran?”

There was sarcasm lacing her voice; deep, dark sarcasm. Hearing her name like that made Sebastian squirm. The nails raked down her collar bone, followed by a tongue, licking at the newly raw skin. Another breathy moan and the leg between her thighs pressed against her, higher, her own hips bucking forward slightly. 

“No, boss.”

Teeth came down into her shoulder, more skin breaking. A whimper tore its way from Sebastian’s throat. Her eyes squeezed shut for a moment and her hips went forward again. 

“Bra.”

Sebastian leaned forward so she could unhook her bra from the back. She hardly had time to drop it out of her hand when Moriarty’s mouth attacked her bare skin, lips and tongue against her breast. Bites covered the sensitive skin, drawing more noises out of Sebastian’s mouth. Her hands clawed uselessly at the wall behind her. 

One of Moriarty’s hands dipped past the waistband of Sebastian's trousers, and she pressed a thumb into her hip bone. Sebastian's hips spasmed, rocking against her the leg in between her own. Moriarty's mouth was on her nipple now, biting hard. Another whimper worked its way from Sebastian’s throat. 

She saw the grin on Moriarty’s face, the blood on her lips, and grabbed her shoulders. Sebastian pushed her away from the wall, out of the living room and towards the bedroom. She pushed Moriarty up against the closed bedroom door and bit her neck, hard, biting and sucking on the skin until Moriarty herself whimpered. 

There were hands in her hair, and Moriarty wrenched Sebastian's mouth away from her neck, glaring. "Bedroom. I won't tell you again."

In a flash of movement and teeth they were on the other side of the door, with Moriarty once again pressed up against it. 

"Bedroom," Sebastian announced, before grabbing the zipper on the side of Moriarty's dress and tugging it down so that she could whisk the black fabric off in one fluid motion. Without the dress on, Moriarty stood there against the door in her high heels, black stockings, suspenders, no pants and the thinnest black bra Sebastian had ever seen. She licked her lips. 

"Do you always dress like this?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

Moriarty grabbed a fistful of Sebastian's hair and pulled her in again, kissing her fiercely, biting on her bottom lip strong enough to draw blood. Sebastian whined at the taste of it, hands grasping Moriarty's bare hips and holding her close, fingers gripping possessively until the hands in her hair moved to her shoulders, pushing her down. 

Sebastian kissed her one more time before dropping down to her knees. 

She slid her hands up Moriarty's thighs, moving from fabric to skin, fingertips skirting the edges of the suspender. Looking up, Sebastian saw Moriarty smirk down at her before turning her attention back to Moriarty's legs. She ghosted her mouth over Moriarty's thigh, up the suspender strap and on to where the lace fabric of the garter belt sat, just above her lip. She paused for a second, kissing the spot before a hand in her hair yanked her away. 

“Now, Moran.”

Sebastian nodded. She licked her lips and Moriarty’s grip tightened. Holding Moriarty's hips with both hands, Sebastian leaned back in, starting at the bottom of the garter belt and kissing slowly downward, nipping at the pale skin until she was sucking lightly on her clit, moving one hand to the inside of her thighs, teasing her lightly. 

The grip on her hair tightened. She sighed against Moriarty, curling a finger inside her. Moriarty, using another hand to sink her nails into Moran’s neck, breaking more skin. Blood pooled and trickled slightly down her back. Slipping in another finger, she circled her tongue around her clit. 

“Harder.”

Moran groaned, eyes fluttering. She slipped another finger in, and pushing harder against her. She continued to flick her tongue, the hand on her hip snaking around to grab at her rear, holding her closer. Moriarty moaned low, bucking against her. She could feel her pants against her face and pressed harder. Moriarty moaned again, louder, ripping at her hair. 

“Ah!”

Moriarty pushed Moran back away from her. She fell back on to the bedroom floor. 

“Get up.”

“You alright?”

“Up! Now!”

Sebastian jumped to her feet at the order. Moriarty advanced on her, pushing Sebastian back and onto the unmade bed. Moriarty landed on top of her, legs intertwining, and scraped her nails down Sebastian's sides again, down unmarked and scarred skin. Those sharp hands did not even stop at Sebastian's thighs, nails scraping until she reached the zipper of her trousers and undid it. She ripped Sebastian's trousers and pants down in one go. 

One hand went around Sebastian's neck, the other slid up her thigh as she leaned over Sebastian. Moriarty's fingers were still surprisingly cold, and Sebastian gasped as she slipped them in her. She felt Moriarty shift a leg, pressing her hand harder into her. With one clever finger, Moriarty teased her clit. Moran’s spine flexed, back bent, at the feeling her skin against Moriarty's.

She let out a string of swears, and Moriarty caught one of her nipples in her mouth, teasing it with her tongue. Sebastian could feel her pulse in her stomach, and moan tore from her throat, low and loud. 

“Close?” Moriarty growled. 

“God, yeah.”

“Good.”

Sebastian woke up the next morning and panicked. 

Sensory information came in bursts. 

She was on a bed. 

Without clothes. 

Sore and with the taste of blood in her mouth. 

And then it all came back. The dark bedroom, with the bed that was much too big for just one psychopath. The silk sheets and the silk skin, and then handcuffing that skin to the headboard because it just wouldn’t stay still. Sebastian smiled, relaxed. The bed smelled like sex.

Sebastian blinked, eyes adjusting to the darkness. The bed was empty. 

The door opened and vicious light flooded into the bedroom. The new light exposed how much there wasn’t to see in the room. Black sheets, nothing on the walls, nothing on the floor. As austere as a hotel room. But Sebastian wasn’t looking at the room. 

In the doorway, silhouetted by the living room light, was Moriarty. Stilettos, pencil skirt, tie, and a scowl. 

"Get up," was the order. But before Sebastian could find some discarded clothing to put on, or even decide if she needed to, Moriarty pulled out a gun. 

Sebastian froze. 

"Special request today," Moriarty said, as if discussing what was for breakfast. As if there wasn’t a gun between them. "Need to make it look like the ex-husband did it." She threw the gun, a generic looking handgun, onto the bed. It bounced once and Sebastian watched it, a million questions coming up in her mind. 

Moriarty went on about DNA, angles, and however else they were going to pull this off. What sort of gloves to use and finally what time it would be. 

"Later tonight, when he doesn't have an alibi of course."

There were a million things she could say. She was naked on the bed with a loaded gun on it and a fully dressed psychopath standing in the doorway. The sensible response would be something sudden and violent. What Sebastian said was:

"Anything else, boss?"


End file.
